by Iris Vander Pluym

ABOUT

Iris Vander Pluym is an artist and activist in NYC (West Village), and an unapologetic, godless, feminist lefty. Raised to believe Nice Girls™ do not discuss politics, sex or religion, it turns out those are pretty much the only topics she ever wants to talk about. Also: squirrels.

TOPICS

CONNECT

EVENTS

Thoughts on yesterday.

[CONTENT NOTE: homelessness, including image of a homeless person.]

It’s a dreary, snowy day in NYC. Not the fun kind of snow that hushes the city in a thick blanket of otherworldly white (and, ideally, melts overnight without a trace). This is a dismal snow, dark flurries of tiny wet flakes that liquefy upon reaching the ground.

But! Yesterday was glorious. It’s days like these that seem to electrify the city (or maybe the city-dwellers?), demanding to be witnessed in all of their vivid splendor and grotesquery. I had appointments and errands on my morning schedule, followed by a late lunch with a dear friend visiting from out of town. This is what I saw.

I stuffed a few dollars under his or her sleeve before I got off the train at 28th St, and walked the rest of the way to my destination.

I thought about the fact that “in recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” One cannot lay soaring populations of homeless people in the US at the feet of our 45th president. That falls squarely on the shoulders of neoliberalism—i.e. both major political parties.

The thing is, the problem of homelessness has one very simple and cost-effective solution: homes.

“You actually need housing to achieve sobriety and stability, not the other way around…giving people supportive housing cost the system about half as much as leaving the homeless to live on the street.”

Well I have a few condemnations of my own. I condemn a society that produces and tolerates more than half a million homeless men, women and children, and holds them personally responsible for their condition. I condemn a society that upholds leaders who endorse that system. And I condemn anyone who justifies, supports and perpetuates policies where cruelty is a feature not a bug, and compassion and common sense the reverse.

It’s so easy to get weighed down by all the crushing weight of evil, but it seems I’m always reading about some form or other of resistance coming out of NYC, and I think you all deserve hugs, booze, and all the credit in the world for being a sustaining candle in the dark.

We will do better. We will drag those purulent ass-weasels kicking and screaming into a humane and humanist future. That’s my new hobby for however much time I have left on our world: saving the damnable nation and saving the damn planet.